Marked (The Coldest Fae Book 3) by Katerina Martinez (novel24 .txt) 📗

it was a trap. We think Radulf manipulated us into doing exactly what he needed us to do, and we were all made fools.”

“I wasn’t just made a fool. I lost him. My bond, my Prince. It’s gone.”

Mira squeezed my shoulder. “It’s not.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s true, I’ve never had a bond as powerful as yours. I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but the Prince is alive. Cillian is still alive.”

“That wasn’t Cillian.”

“Dahlia… we have all had time to go over, and over, and over what happened. We all saw it. We saw how he almost attacked you, but then restrained himself at the last moment. He could’ve killed you.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means everything. It means Cillian is still in there, somewhere—maybe the same way that Radulf has been this whole time. Buried. Submerged. Desperate to be freed.”

I opened my eyes again, wiped them with the back of my hand, and turned onto my other side to look at Mira. I hated how beautiful she looked right now, because it was impossible not to feel something when looking at her.

She almost looked like a different person, though. Mira had ditched most of her castle attire and was wearing something a little more tribal, a little more primal. Her long white hair had been knotted and braided, further accenting her angular face and pointed ears.

“You look different,” I said.

“You haven’t looked at me in well over a week,” she said, an eyebrow cocked. “This isn’t the only surprise, either, but you need to get up if you want to see them.”

I frowned. “I don’t want to get up.”

“That pitiful gaze may have worked for you back in the human world, but it won’t work with me. I’m your custodian, remember?”

“The selection is over,” I grumbled. “You’re not my custodian anymore.”

She shook her head. “Untrue. As long as you breathe, the selection continues… remember?”

I stared at her long and hard, the line in between my eyebrows pinching and deepening further. “What… are you saying?”

“Have you already forgotten what the prize for winning is?”

“No, but I don’t see…”

Mira’s eyes widened, as if she was waiting for me to figure something out by myself. “Mira, my brain hurts, I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

“The Prince? The winner gets to marry the Prince.”

“Radulf is the Prince.”

“Maybe that’s what it feels like to you, but you don’t know that, and you won’t know until you go back to the castle and see him.”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not. Are you insane?”

“No, I’m thinking quite clearly, in fact. It took all of our collective brainpower to figure this one out, but we have a solution. Unfortunately, it only works if you get out of that bed.”

“Solution to what?”

Mira sighed. “Dahlia, do you want the Prince back? Do you want Cillian back?”

“I do.”

“Then you have to fight for him.”

“But the fight is over?”

“It’s not. You’re still alive. He’s still alive. Your bond is broken, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be restored, remember?”

Click. Like a puzzle piece, it fell into place. The winner of the Royal Selection doesn’t only get to marry the Prince, fate itself forges a soul bond between the two. That was why my bond with the Prince was so strange—he wasn’t meant to have been bonded to anyone until the selection was over.

“But you…” I paused, trying to think of a reason to object to this idea. I couldn’t. “What you’re suggesting is… I mean, it’s a long shot.”

“The longest.”

“And I’m not a very good shot.”

“No… you’re a terrible shot. But you’re sitting upright, and that’s an improvement.”

“I am?” I checked. I was. I had propped myself up on my elbows, and I hadn’t even realized it. “Mira… this would mean having to go back to the castle, seeing him again, and dealing with Radulf; maybe even the King.”

“Like you said, it’s a long shot, but the only other option is for you to sit here until, eventually, he comes for you again with an army to finish the selection—possibly before, or maybe even after he’s taken that army to Earth and killed your mothers.”

“My mothers…”

Mira took my hand and showed me the silvery tattoo on the back of it. “You can’t let that happen, and you’re the only one who can stop it.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You have done a great many things you didn’t know how to do, and you’ve already done one of the hardest things imaginable. You killed the man you loved because you thought it would save the lives of strangers. You are the bravest, strongest person I know, and it would be my privilege to walk back into that castle with you and help you win this thing.”

I ran my fingers through my hair. My mind was racing with my heart, thoughts rushing through my head, possibilities blooming in front of me like a field of flowers in spring. This wasn’t going to be easy. Radulf had a huge head start on us—in fact, there was no way of knowing exactly where he was right now.

I could only hope he was at the castle, and at the same time, I hoped he wasn’t. I didn’t think I was ready to face him again. I never thought I would be, especially if he had taken full control of the Prince’s body and Cillian, my Cillian, was nowhere in sight.

How was I supposed to get close to him when the spirit in possession of the body was a crazy, demonic asshole, and my soul bond with Cillian was broken?

Not broken—absent. Broken implied there was something I could fix, some wrong I could right. I didn’t think that was the case. More than ever, I needed to go back to the castle and win the Royal Selection. It was the only way to get fate to stitch our souls back together again; or, at least, that was the theory, but a theory was all we had.

And it was enough.

I